Derivatives

multicellularity

This supracellular, or organismal, approach towards multicellularity seems to have allowed sessile plants to adapt to life on land and to evolve even within hostile environments.

This could have been the origin of both multicellularity and the requirement for cell death in multicellular organisms.

Thus it seems likely that the volvocine algae may retain in their genomes more evidence of the pathway that they followed from unicellularity to multicellularity than members of the major multicellular groups do.